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Season 2, Episode 9 The West: The Geography of Hope

First Aired: September 23, 1996

Part 7 of the Burns-produced 1996 history of the West follows the fortunes of settlers who arrived after 1877, when numerous towns started to appear, some in places previously deemed unlivable. Among them were blacks who flocked to Kansas and homesteaders who endured droughts and blizzards in Nebraska. Included: Sitting Bull's role as part of “Buffalo Bill” Cody's Western show; Teddy Roosevelt's early career as a rancher; the political pressures that eliminated polygamy from Mormonism in Utah; and the impact of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Directed by Stephen Ives (“Reporting America at War”); Peter Coyote narrates.